Speech by Preseli Pembrokeshire MP Stephen Crabb to the Welsh Conservative Party conference 2010. “Conference, good morning. It’s a pleasure to be back in sunny Llandudno.
Let me start by thanking our previous seven speakers for so brilliantly exposing how Labour has failed the poorest people and communities in this country.
Some of you here today will remember the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor who was famously married nine times.
Well, standing here having listened to so many other excellent speeches, I am starting to feel a bit like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s eighth husband who said to her on their wedding night: “I think I know what I am expected to do now, but I really have no way of making this interesting for you.”
So, to Suzie Davies, our superb candidate in Brecon & Radnor who introduced the debate; to Guto Bebb, the next MP for Aberconwy; to Dawn Parry fighting hard in Newport East and making the Labour Party very nervous indeed down there; to Robin Millar, our candidate in Arfon; to Byron Davies, blazing a trail down in Gower; to Matt Wright standing for us in the Vale of Clwyd; and finally to Mark Isherwood who demonstrates his deep and passionate commitment to social justice week in, week out at the Assembly:
I say: Thank You.
You show again why it is the Welsh Conservative Party that is indeed the progressive party of social justice here in Wales, and why our country needs – so desperately needs – a change of government to start tackling some of the deepest challenges we are facing in society.
Gordon Brown, of course, denies that society is broken in any sense at all. In fact, he is a man in denial about many things:
…in denial about the true state of the economy; in denial about the appalling state of the public finances; and in denial about the tough solutions this country needs if it is to get up off its knees again.
One issue Gordon Brown did speak a lot about last weekend is aggressive antisocial behaviour, which he admits is a problem now in many parts – although not, of course, in Downing Street.
He said, just one week ago, that he wants to give all victims of serious anti-social behaviour a "guarantee of protection".
Members of staff in his Private Office are wondering whether this guarantee of protection will extend to them.
The trouble with Gordon Brown saying he wants everyone to have a guarantee of protection is that you rather feel like you are being offered it by a member of the Kray Gang.
And while Gordon Brown and his tired and divided Labour Party are in denial, refusing to face up to the realities of the deeply entrenched problems many communities are facing, it is Conservatives who are generating the ideas and the policies which can make a real difference.
And I think of a man like Iain Duncan-Smith, a man for whom I have total respect and admiration, who back in 2004 had every reason to take time out or to put his feet up for a while, but who chose instead to devote his amazing energy and talent to tackling deprivation, tirelessly visiting housing estates in every corner of the United Kingdom, creating the Centre for Social Justice which is now – without exception – the most effective and the most innovative poverty-fighting think-tank in Britain,
And I think that, Conference, we owe him a big, big debt of gratitude.
And I am delighted that two of Iain’s team from the Centre for Social Justice have been selected as Conservative Candidates here in Wales: Robin Millar in Arfon, who spoke to us just a few minutes ago, and Juliette Ashe who spoke yesterday and who will be taking the Conservative social justice message to the Cynon Valley showing that there are no ‘no-go areas’ for the Conservative Party.
The Conservative Party is a Party for the whole country and for every community.
We are not sectional; we are not class-driven.
We have no time for Gordon Brown’s ugly dividing lines which have nothing whatsoever to do with lifting people out of poverty and everything to do with the narrow interests of the Labour Party.
We are the Party of One Nation; a Party for the whole country.
But what do we mean when we speak of a “Broken Society”?
We are talking here about the millions of people often living in housing estates blighted by educational failure; worklessness; dependency on benefits; crime and antisocial behaviour; drug and alcohol abuse; where the young men father children who will – in all probability – grow up themselves to repeat this tragic cycle of waste and misery.
We are talking about the tragedy of people like the young woman in her mid twenties who walked into my office in Milford Haven with her little toddler last year and told me that she had been a heroin addict since the age of 17 and how she has another daughter which she now sees only rarely. And she described to me the consequences of her destructive lifestyle, and how desperate she now is to somehow get her life back together again.
And when we use that phrase “broken society”, we begin to get close to how many people instinctively feel about the condition of our society today.
People believe what they see with their own eyes in the communities in which they live.
And they see a society – a country – where far too often hard work is not valued; where education is not seen as the gateway out of poverty; where the honest and responsible get taken for a ride by the feckless and irresponsible; and where too often criminals can walk away smiling knowing that the probability of being caught and punished is absurdly low.
…a country where almost exactly a quarter of the adult population now do not work;
…where two million children are growing up in households where no-one works;
…where a million young people age 16-24 are not in either work, education or any kind of training – Labour’s lost generation of young people;
…and a country where social inequality – the gap between the rich and the poor – is greater than it has been since records began.
You really have to ask: “Which part of the Broken Society does Gordon Brown not get?”
We, in the Conservative Party, understand just what it is that binds strong communities together.
I know for a fact that, here in this auditorium this morning, there are Conservative Members who help run after school clubs for children; who deliver Meals on Wheels; who organise Neighbourhood Watch groups; who volunteer with the Girl Guides; who raise funds to keep local community groups going; and there are those in this auditorium today who, day after day, look in on an elderly neighbour just to check that they are OK.
These are the stitches and the weaves that together help make a strong social fabric and a vibrant community, and each one is priceless.
But the Labour Party doesn’t get it at all.
This is one of the biggest fault lines between them and us.
For Labour, any activity that isn’t sanctioned, regulated, funded, inspected and controlled by the State must be inherently suspect and needs to be brought under government control - or stopped altogether.
We, however, we understand that there is such a thing as Society. But we know that it just isn’t the same thing as the State.
That’s why we are developing new creative ways of involving grass-roots charities and community groups in helping to tackle poverty and social breakdown.
And at the heart of a strong society lies strong family life.
The first, second and third line of defence against poverty is the Family.
History has not seen any social organisation that gets close to providing the welfare, security and nurture which the Family provides. It is within the family environment that children develop and the foundations for their future lives are laid.
There is now a wealth of evidence that shows that family structure and stability have a profound and long-term impact on children, particularly in the early years of their life.
And let’s be truthful about this:
We know that a child who has grown up with two nurturing parents has far higher chances of succeeding in life than a child growing up in a broken, dysfunctional family.
Yet still Labour remains ideologically incapable of addressing the appalling consequences of broken family life in this country.
The Government does the children of this country a huge disservice by trying to cling to the belief that it can be neutral about family structure and about family stability.
Labour has failed to understand that a stable family home life is vital if we are to achieve a more equal society.
What kind of country designs its Tax and Benefit system to actively encourage the mothers and fathers of children to live apart from each other?
No other country does, is the answer.
Britain stands out alone in the Western world in not positively recognising the importance of marriage in the tax system.
So a Conservative Government will remove the bias against marriage in the tax code,
…and we will stop the discrimination against couples in the tax credits and benefits system.
We cannot go on subsidising social breakdown.
And it’s not just about a creating a fairer tax and benefits system; it’s about providing far better support for young parents, widening access to affordable childcare and creating new flexibility for parents to balance their work and family lives.
We want to make Britain the most family friendly country in Europe to give every child a better start.
But our very first mission, conference, is to fix an economy which has been well and truly broken after thirteen years of Labour’s car-crash economics.
It is a truth that should be well understood now, that every Labour Government leaves this country poorer; with Sterling losing value; unemployment increasing and debt getting bigger.
And it is has been the mission of every Conservative Government since the War to clean up the mess of an outgoing Labour administration.
This time round the mess is very big indeed.
The public finances are, frankly, a horror story - except that there really is nothing fictional about a £180 billion deficit and £900 billion of national debt.
Our children and their children after them will end up paying for this. They will pay for it year after year with debt interest payments that are double the size of the entire Education and Defence budgets
Truly, we cannot afford another five years of Gordon Brown.
And when you see the budget deficit increasing by £500m every single day, you realise that we cannot afford another five weeks of this Government.
A fortnight ago the Chancellor Alistair Darling complained that Gordon Brown had “unleashed the forces of hell” on him.
Well, how then should we describe the forces that Brown unleashed on our economy which has saddled this country with such unbearable debt?
We have also learned recently that Gordon Brown himself once screamed in the face of Tony Blair “You have ruined my life!” because Blair didn’t step aside when he wanted him to.
What then should a man who has seen his retirement pension decimated by Brown’s raid on the pension funds scream in the face of this Prime Minister?
Or the family who have seen their home repossessed after Brown pumped up the property market with cheap debt only for it to crash again in the worst ever cycle of boom and bust?
Labour doesn’t deserve to lose this coming election.
It deserves to be wiped out for what it has done to our country.
But if we think Gordon Brown will just roll over in front of us and let us form a government we are deeply mistaken.
A man who plotted and schemed and grasped and sulked and tantrummed his way into Downing Street will do anything to stay there. Anything.
He will throw everything he can at us in the coming days and weeks and at times it will feel very unpleasant.
But we need to hold our nerve.
Moments like this don’t come round very often in a lifetime.
It is for moments like these we all joined this wonderful Party, to help not just bring about a change of government but to change the very course of the nation itself.
Many of you in this hall have served our party for a very long time. You have seen our Party through the good times and you kept the Party in business during the bad times.
But the opportunity that lies before us right now calls again for a massive concerted effort.
We need to work harder at this campaign than we have ever worked before.
We need to go out of this conference and spend the coming days fighting hard…
…fighting as if the very future of this country depends on it – because that is exactly what is at stake at this election.
And the message you need to take back your constituencies, back to your families, friends and neighbours is this:
If you love this country – if you genuinely love this country – you need to vote for change.
You need to vote for David Cameron and vote for the Conservative Party,
…to fix our economy;
…to get this country moving again;
…and to give our children the future they deserve.
Conference, let’s go out and win this election!”